✭✭✭✭✩

written by Georges Bizet, directed by Justin Way

Canadian Opera Company, Four Seasons Centre, Toronto

January 27-February 27, 2010

For the 2016 production of Carmen, click here.

Carmen, opera’s iconic bad girl, has found an ideal interpreter in Rinat Shaham.  In terms of acting alone she creates the most complex realization of the character this reviewer has ever seen.  She is a being of pantherine intensity and appetite who regards her lover as her prey.  Yet, she is never so involved in her actions that she doesn’t also calculate their effect.  She seeks absolute freedom from civil laws and moral codes but simultaneously sees her life as ruled by fate.  It is wonderful finally to see someone embody the contradictions that make the character so endlessly fascinating.  Shaham’s acting would mean nothing if it were not a natural extension of her singing.  She has a lush velvety tone, rich even in the lowest notes and gleaming in the highest.  Her performance anchors the entire production.  (Note that from February 17 on the role is sung by Anita Rachvelishvili.)

If only the other performances were at Shaham’s level, this Carmen would be perfection.  As Micaëla, the opera’s good girl, Jessica Muirhead sings with great beauty but her natural poise makes seem less like a country girl than an aristocrat in disguise.  As Don José, the women both women love, Bryan Hymel has powerful voice but his acting tends to be too generic to be involving.  Carmen dumps Don José for the toreador Escamillo, but as played by Paul Gay he is devoid of personality.    

Director Justin Way emphasizes the story’s gritty realism while lighting designer Aaron Black surrounds the characters with ominous shadows.  Under Rory Macdonald, the amazing 29-year-old Scottish conductor, the COC Orchestra plays with precision and passion, while bringing out the gorgeous orchestral colour and lively dance rhythms of Bizet’s score.  Those familiar with the opera will want to see it simply for Shaham’s performance.  For others, the sizzling Shaham plus Way’s direction and Macdonald’s conducting will make this an exciting introduction to opera.     

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review appeared in Eye Weekly 2010-01-29.

Photo: Rinat Shaham and Alain Coulombe. ©Michael Cooper.